Device helps woman with cerebral palsy run flower shop

For sufferers of cerebral palsy, accomplishing simple tasks that most people take for granted is an enormous challenge. Fortunately for one woman who has cerebral palsy, an engineer built her a device that allowed her to start her own flower shop.

Rebekah McGeer started Firefly Flowers in Vancouver after a volunteer engineer devised a contraption that allows her to strip leaves and cut flowers with one hand, according to Canwest News Service.

McGeer can not feel half of her body because of her cerebral palsy. Because of this she can not use her left arm, which made arranging flower bouquets a monumental task. However, Marvin Pflug came along and built a device to help McGeer out.

"She has no finger control. So in order to hold a flower stem, she needs to hold it with something, so we came up with a clamping device," Pflug told the news source.

Pflug made the device out of an old BMX bike brake and rubber. He said he came up with the idea after many years of helping his children fix their bicycles.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 10,000 babies will develop cerebral palsy in the U.S. each year.